Will Europe ban Monsanto GM corn after French study linking it to cancer?

Pending affirmation by its national health agency, France is expected to call for an official ban on Monsanto’s genetically-modified (GM) corn very soon “at a European level,” according to the French news source RFI.

Following the recent release of a University of Caen study that found a link between the “Frankencorn” and the development of severe tumors in rats, French officials have been urging a Europe-wide ban on both the cultivation and import of the GM corn, which was never proven safe in the first place prior to its commercial release.

The study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, revealed for the first time that rats fed Monsanto’s NK603 GM corn treated with Roundup (glyphosate) herbicide for longer than 90 days developed deadly tumors at a much higher, and much quicker, rate than rats not exposed to these products. Similar health consequences were observed in rats fed NK603 GM corn without Roundup, as well as in rats exposed to just Roundup, revealing more about the true toxicity of these two highly-pervasive food technologies.

What the study suggests, in other words, is that GMOs are far from innocuous, and that they pose some very serious health threats when consumed for long periods of time. Since there have never been any other long-term studies on the safety of GMOs — and definitely none that have ever proven them to be safe — it makes logical and scientific sense to adopt the precautionary principle in light of the available evidence, which is heavily stacked against the continued purveyance of GMOs.

And this latest study out of France only affirms what groups like IRT have been warning about for years — that GMOs are not safe, that independent research clearly illustrates their potential health risks, and that no long-term safety studies have ever definitively proven that GMO consumption is safe or beneficial to human health.

“While previous studies have usually lasted only about three months, Seralini’s (French GMO study) lasted two years, the average rat’s lifespan, and the illnesses developed later in the period covered,” says RFI.